Results tagged “submissions”

Er…short films, that is. Okay, here’s a video to give you a better idea of what I’m yammering about, followed by some details.

Sweet, eh? So here’s a little more detail. For the fifth year running, Experience Music Project | Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (that’s the full name of the entity, and it sounds like the kind of place to which I must visit lest I be accused of being Bizzaro Kyle) is partnering with the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) to present the Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival.

This is one of those instances where Seattle trumps New York, I’m afraid. Sure, we have lots of other film festivals in this tiny hamlet by the seaside, but, like a cranky kid lusting after the top shelf in a toy story, I WANT THIS ONE!

Of course, the festival doesn’t open until January 30, 2010, so I have time (and so do you) to buy my tickets and devise a way for my hindquarters to be squarely planted in Seattle seats come festival time. But that’s for us attendees. You filmmakers out there are probably wondering about submitting entries to the festival, right? Well, below is what I found.

From Science Fiction Museum:

From June 1 through September 15, 2009, the Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival (SFFSFF) will accept short film submissions, up to 15 minutes in length, that have been produced after 2005 for entry into the competition. Multiple submissions will be accepted according to the rules and regulations. Submissions will be judged based on originality, quality, artistic merit, innovation, voice, style and narrative.

SFFSFF is accepting animated or live-action submissions in science fiction (examples: futuristic stories, space adventure, technological speculation, social experiments, utopia and dystopia) and fantasy (examples: sword and sorcery, folklore, urban fantasy, magic, mythic adventure). The festival welcomes submissions that step outside the boundaries of reality and inspire a sense of wonder. The festival will not accept horror submissions. Submissions are accepted through Without a Box.

There are more detail on the event over at the Science Fiction Museum & Hall of Fame’s website: Film Festival Details. Be sure to check out that site. And not just for this festival, but for all the other cool things going on there as well.

I finished writing my book last night—again.

Yes. Again.

I completed the first draft of The Dark Thorn about a month ago. I was fairly happy with it but knew it was only one step in a series of steps. Months ago when I had submitted its first four chapters, my prospective agent asked for the book when it was done but warned I had a great deal of purple prose that would need editing before he would send it to a publisher. It meant once I finished it I would have to start from the beginning and remove as much of that flowery, ornate language as I could.

After a long month of analyzing every word, sentence, paragraph and bit of dialog, I have a much tighter—and shorter—book.

The first draft of The Dark Thorn was 162,000 words. It is now 149,000 words.

Hence my finishing the book yet again.

It is now time for the next step though. The agent submission.

The first of what I hope will not be many!

Ironically, a few days ago I received an email from a hopeful writer concerning the next step for him to take now that his manuscript and editing are completed:

A whole other article can be written on how to fully submit a book to various agents and editors. There are rules upon rules for doing it correctly and just one error can end an opportunity. More on this soon!

Have a question for me? Other than why do you talk about your unpublished book so much? Send them in to me! I love to talk about the craft of writing.

And the business that comes after!

I posted a few weeks ago about things not to do in a cover letter. Now I’d like to showcase a few cover letters I’ve seen over the years that fulfilled their mission.

To recap: A bad cover letter can affect an editor negatively—negatively enough, at times, to send the submission straight into the circular file. A good cover letter won’t sell a manuscript, but if it catches my eye in a positive way it can cause me to pick up the attached manuscript sooner than I otherwise would.

One purpose of a cover letter should be to provide a few selling points for the manuscript. Part of an editor’s decision to buy a manuscript is based upon its “saleability” in the eyes of sales reps and booksellers. Is the author an expert in his/her field? Does he/she have a big publicity platform that will help a publisher reach the target audience?

Here is an example of a cover letter that supplied a major selling point in an engaging way. If the author happens to read this and would like to identify herself, that would be great—my compliments on the submission letter, which came into an editor friend of mine more than fifteen years ago.

[more after the jump]

I keep a collection of manuscript excerpts and cover letters that have come in over the years. They’re useful as demonstrations of what to do—or not to do—in the process of submitting a book for publication. I quote from them at writers’ conferences and SF/fantasy conventions in hopes that others will learn.

This week I received a submission from a writer who informed me that several other publishers had already turned the project down. Lack of vision and publishing guts had led to those decisions, the cover letter said, leaving the project ripe for the picking by another publisher intelligent enough to recognize its value.

The inference was that if I rejected the material, we’d be added to the list of visionless, timid publishers who’d had their chance and failed to act. This did not go over well with me; I don’t react well to the badmouthing of other editors even if they remain nameless. [more]